A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/79572 Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications HORACE IN THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE (1498-1600) BY GIACOMO COMIATI A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies University of Warwick, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Italian Studies September 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments page 4 Abstract 5 List of Abbreviations 6 INTRODUCTION 8 1. RENAISSANCE BIOGRAPHERS OF HORACE 27 1.1 Fifteenth-Century Biographers 30 1.2 The First Printed Biographies 43 1.3 Biographies in the Sixteenth Century 53 Conclusion 66 2. RENAISSANCE COMMENTATORS OF HORACE 69 2.1 The Exegetical Fortune of Horace in the Late Quattrocento 71 2.2 Horatian Commentators: from Beroaldo the Elder to Girolamo Scoto 84 2.3 Horatian Exegesis 1550-1600 103 2.4 The Art of Poetry and its Exegesis 114 Conclusion 129 3. RENAISSANCE TRANSLATORS OF HORACE 133 3.1 Translating Horace’s Hexametrical Works 134 3.2 Translating Horace’s Lyrical Production 148 Conclusion 166 4. RENAISSANCE ITALIAN IMITATORS OF HORACE 169 4.1 The Satirical Genre 171 4.2 Vernacular Odes 188 4.3 The Founding Fathers of Petrarchism 210 2 4.4 Petrarchism After Bembo 220 4.4.1 Naples 220 4.4.2 Tuscany 230 4.4.3 Venetian Region 238 Conclusion 250 5. RENAISSANCE NEO-LATIN IMITATORS OF HORACE 256 5.1 Florence between Landino and Poliziano 258 5.2 Naples and Pontano’s Academy 273 5.3 Between Bologna and Ferrara 282 5.4 From Rome to Venice 293 5.5 Imitation in the later Cinquecento 309 Conclusion 313 CONCLUSION 316 APPENDIX 334 BIBLIOGRAPHY 342 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First I want to thank my supervisors David Lines and Simon Gilson for their on- going advice and support. I feel grateful and honoured to have been guided by them in my doctoral pathway during the last three years. I would like to acknowledge my honorary mentors Eugenio Refini and Alessio Cotugno, who have always unconditionally offered me their suggestions and help both as academic advisors and friends. I also wish to thank Martina Piperno and Kate Willman, my dear colleagues and trustworthy friends, with whom it has been a privilege to walk side by side during these years. I hope to keep doing the same in many coming ones. My appreciation, esteem, and respect are due to all my colleagues in Italian at Warwick. I specifically wish to thank Maude Vanhaelen and Eliana Maestri for their assistance and help, and Anna Pegoretti and Matteo Pretelli for their support and friendship. I am also very grateful to Monia Andreucci, Serena Bassi, Masha Belova, Sara Boezio, Simone Brioni, Rocco Di Dio, Giacomo Mannironi, Sara Miglietti, Cecilia Muratori, Gioia Panzarella, Paola Roccella, and Gabriele Scalessa for their friendship and the marvellous atmosphere they all contributed to creating in our department. I would like to record my debt to Franco Tomasi and Gianluigi Baldo, whose teachings in Padua first stimulated my interest in Italian lyric poetry and Horace and whose aid and assistance never stopped accompanying me. I am also grateful to Ginetta Auzzas and Manlio Pastore Stocchi for their lectures and for having liberally devoted part of their time to discuss the subject of this dissertation. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge my true and dear friends, whose backing has always sustained me over the course of my entire life. I want in particular to express my gratitude to Livia Nardini, Giulio Cabianca, Tobia Lana, Giacomo Cavalli, Nicolò Pagan, and Tommaso Rossi, as well as Gaia Armellin, Sebastiano Bazzichetto, Filippo Bertolin, Stefano Bianchi, Giulia Bologna, Stefano Bragato, Alice Breda, Alvise Canniello, Andrea Cavalli, Giorgio Carbone, Cinzia Cavallaro, Giovanni Ceroni, Andrea Cerruti, Alessandra Cigna, Leone Cesare Cimetta, Marco Cinelli, Elena Coldel, Andrea Comunello, Giulia Contò, Francesco De Anna, Tommaso De Robertis, Francesco Di Giambattista, Chiara Di Giovanni, Cecilia Fabris, Bianca Facchini, Elena Favaretto, Federica Fragiacomo, Lorenzo Freschi, Andrea Fincato, Davide Galliani, Michele Gintoli, Riccardo Grandi, Marianna Lana, Angela Marcon, Selene Mezzalira, Emanuela Morotti, Lisa Morsanuto, Chiara Pavan, Ester Pietrobon, Nicola Pusterla, Marco Ramo, Andrea Ruaro, Chiara Trevisan, Alessandra Scabello, Lorenzo Serini, Elena Spangenberg, Elisa Tamburini, Davide Tasinato, Marco Vitturi, Alexander Winkler, Eleonora Zampieri, Filippo Zanini, and Enrico Zucchi. I also wish to express my debt of gratitude to Alessandro Metlica. I owe most of all to my family, my cousins Valentina, Andrea, and Giovanni, and, above all, my parents, Paolo and Francesca, to whom this work is dedicated. 4 ABSTRACT This dissertation aims to study the reception of the Latin poet Horace in the Italian Renaissance, taking into consideration works composed in several different genres both in Latin and Italian vernacular between 1498 and 1600. This thesis follows five main pathways of investigation: 1) to study the Renaissance biographies of the poet; 2) to analyse several exegetical works both in Horace’s single texts and his whole corpus; 3) to study the Italian translations written both in prose and verse which were made during the Cinquecento; 4) to study in depth those who imitated Horace in their lyrical and satirical poems composed in Italian; and 5) to examine those Neo-Latin poetical works (mainly pertaining to the lyrical and satirical genres). This dissertation points out that the numerous and various forms of Horatian reception help to evaluate the real flourishing of sixteenth-century interest in the Latin poet, interest that reflects the fact that Horace was part of the new Renaissance canon of classical authorities. Within the sixteenth-century conflict of cultures, Horace appears as one of the main protagonists of the critical and literary scenes, as is shown by the attention that his works received from the point of view of editions, commentaries, and translations respectively, as well as by the fact that his texts were placed at the centre of several literary imitative practices, his example being able to offer the Renaissance one important basis upon which to found part of its new culture. Indeed, Horace allowed the emergence of an ethical strain to the Renaissance lyric, as well as contributing to the provision of rules for sixteenth-century literary criticism. 5 ABBREVIATIONS Horace’s works are referred to by the titles listed in the first volume of Enciclopedia Oraziana, ed. by Scevola Mariotti (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, 1996-1998). Except in the appendix, where Latin names are used throughout, the names of Renaissance authors are given in currently familiar forms: hence ‘Badius Ascensius’ for ‘Josse Bade van Asche’, but ‘Cristoforo Landino’ instead of ‘Christophorus Landinus’. Abbreviations have been silently expanded. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from Latin are mine. WORKS BY HORACE Ars P. Ars Poetica Carm. Carmina or Odes Carm. saec. Carmen saeculare Epod. Epodon Liber or Iambi Epist. Epistulae Sat. Satirae or Sermones JOURNALS, SERIES AND ENCYCLOPAEDIAS ASI Archivio storico italiano BENLW Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World BHR Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance CL Critica letteraria DBI Dizionario biografico degli italiani EO Enciclopedia Oraziana FC Filologia e critica GIF Giornale italiano di filologia GSLI Giornale storico della letteratura italiana HL Humanistica Lovaniensia IMU Italia medioevale e umanistica IS Italian Studies JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes RLI Rivista di letteratura italiana RPL Res Publica Litterarum 6 RQ Renaissance Quarterly RS Renaissance Studies SFI Studi di Filologia Italiana SLI Studi di letteratura italiana SPCT Studi e problemi di critica testuale OTHER ABBREVIATIONS CURCIO Gaetano Curcio, Quinto Orazio Flacco studiato in Italia dal secolo XIII al XVIII IURILLI Antonio Iurilli, Orazio nella letteratura italiana OLI Orazio e la letteratura italiana OLM Orazio nella letteratura mondiale PCL Postera crescam laude: Orazio nell’età moderna 7 INTRODUCTION This dissertation aims to study the reception of the Latin poet Horace in sixteenth- century Italy. The working hypothesis on which this research is based is that Horace’s influence in the Italian Renaissance is worth studying both in its own right and because it has indissoluble links with the literary history of the Cinquecento and the phenomenon of the sixteenth-century re-appropriation of the classics. Moreover, Horace offers a useful and almost unique way of studying crossovers between Latin and Italian vernacular, since he was taken as a model by those who wrote their works in both languages. Finally, Horace’s reception deserves a detailed study because it reflects some important aspects of intersections between literary and exegetical practices, as well as various aspects of Renaissance poetical theory and practice. A question pertinent to every classical author is what became of their texts beyond their original contexts: how were they received, and how were their poems or prose works employed and reutilized? The reception of